One year after a runaway train transporting oil plowed through the downtown core of Lac-Mégantic, igniting and razing much of the town’s commercial centre, three McGill University students with a passion for social entrepreneurship have become part of the town’s efforts to rebuild.

Just outside the metal fence that cordons off that vast swath of this old railway town’s ravaged downtown core that everyone now calls the Red Zone, there stands a row of tall oaks with seared trunks, woebegone branches and stunted leaves.

The Red Cross says it has spent nearly $9 million on reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts in Lac-Mégantic in the 12 months since a runaway train smashed into the municipality's downtown core and exploded.

A man who was arrested after Montreal police found explosive devices in a north-end triplex and evacuated the neighbourhood over the weekend was charged on Monday with possession of explosives and weapons.

L’ISLE VERTE — Arnaud Côté spent his working life as a farmer, caring for his herd of 19 dairy cows and working his small field of mixed crops on the edge of town. From now on, people in the village where he has lived and toiled his whole life may also know him as something else. A hero. A true survivor.

The painstaking job of finding the bodies of 30 people or more who died when fire, whipped by fierce winds, roared through the Résidence du Havre in this Lower St. Lawrence village is being complicated by thick ice and the collapse of the three-storey building.

The work to decontaminate and rebuild the devastated downtown core of Lac-Mégantic will continue even as the temperature drops and the snow begins to fall, but it remains unclear who will foot the final bill for the cleanup.

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